The Pete Rose Case

Sportslaw History: The Pete Rose Case

[Note: This history column was published in September. However, I felt that it merited republication as a "current article" because of Pete Rose's selection to the "All-Century Team" and the controversy over NBC broadcaster Jim Gray's interview with Rose. There are also an additional article and one letter relating to this events of this week] It is exactly ten years since Pete Rose was banned from baseball by then-commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti. Many have questioned the decision, since it prevents Rose from being considered for induction into the sport's Hall of Fame and prevents him from taking any part in the sport.

The details of the events are worth retelling. In 1989, reports circulated that Rose bet on baseball games, even games played by the Cincinnati Reds, the team he managed, Such an offense, if proven, could lead to a lifetime ban. Commissioner Giamatti, a Yale professor and avid baseball lover, investigated under the powers granted under Art. I, sec. 2 of the Major League Agreement (baseball's governing document). After three months and 40 witnesses, a report concluded that Rose bet on games.

Ron Powers, one of the witnesses, was convicted of income tax and drug offenses. After the investigation, Giamatti sent a letter to the sentencing judge, stating that the witness was "candid, forthright and truthful" in providing important testimony. That issue raised some troubling questions about the impartiality of the Commissioner's action. Rose's lawyer brought suit in an Ohio court to enjoin Giamatti from taking any more action, claiming prejudice and a "vendetta" and a due process violation. The baseball agreement noted that proceedings will be conducted "in general" like judicial proceeings, but "may depart from those in cases in which the ends of justice will in his judgment be subserved by doing." Translate: don't expect the baseball commissioner to be an open-minded judge; he is the judge, jury, prosecutor and appeals court.

The court granted a ten-day temporary restraining order (a very preliminary form of injunction) on the basis of bias by Giamatti. According to the judge, the defendants failed to comply with their own rules and give Rose a fair and impartial hearing.

Giamatti sought to remove the case to Federal Court to make a final determination of the dispute. He argued that the agreement rules form a part of Rose's contract and disciplinary authority is vested in the commissioner.

Just as the trial was about to begin, Rose pleaded guilty on income tax charges and dropped the suit. He accepted the life ban.

So Pete Rose did not admit to gambling, but rather to tax evasion. Shortly afterward Giamatti died of a heart attack.

At the moment, the present baseball commissioner Bude Selig has not plans to commute the ban.

At the time, the columnist George Will wrote that the Pete Rose case was an example of the courts' "unhealthy itch" to supervise and fine-tune virtually every equity judgment in American life. Rose's legal strategy was to find a judge willing to insinuate himself into baseballs' internal rules... A nanny-like judiciary would made the commissioner's office negligible -- another hitherto private institution permeated by state power.

May would agree. And it could be possible that Rose did gamble and bet on his team. But the actions of Giamatti fudged the roles of prosecutor and impartial judge. A quid pro quo between a witness and a subsequent letter for his leniency in an unrelated case smacks of a conflict and at the very least, it demonstrated poor judgment by Bart Giamatti.

Click here for letter.

Click here for article.